Monday 27 February 2012 10.34 EST
First published on Monday 27 February 2012 10.34 EST

Those of us fighting for lesbian and gay liberation have plainly gone too far, according to Christina Odone, who has written about the problems heterosexuals have when forced into treating us as equals. We are opening the floodgates, apparently, for all sorts of daft minority groups to demand similar rights to the point where poor conventional straight folk will end up in a minority fighting for the right to be heard.

In her latest opinion piece on the topic, Odone is arguing that gay people seek special treatment rather than equality. She is not the first person to say so, but Odone is going out on a limb here and bringing in polygamous trysts and underage sex. A Christian couple running a B&B, she argues, would also probably turn away a ménage à trois, but that the threesome concerned would fail to "convince the majority of their victimhood".

Take naturists – if they demanded the right to be naked at work, particularly if their job is in a bank or a building site, we would laugh in their faces and tell them that there are special camps at which they can flash themselves.

Odone isn't the only one to worry about where all this might lead, of course. Republican candidate Rick Santorum has also expressed concern about the special rights we are afforded, and agrees that once gay people are allowed to ride roughshod over conventional heterosexual coupling other sexual oddballs will not be far behind. "If the supreme court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything." Rightwing pressure group Concerned Women of America said Santorum was being hounded by the "gay thought police" when he was criticised for his sentiments. Oh, the power we wield!

Heterosexuals, however nice, are linked to failing relationships and divorce, domestic violence, child abuse, war, silly fashion and unwanted pregnancy. Any time I have asked one of them what makes them straight, they look at me blankly because they hadn't, until that moment, realised they actually were (having previously used that word to describe the edge of a ruler). When they did accept their sexuality, however, many were miffed to learn that they had never been offered the opportunity of being humiliated when booking into a hotel with their opposite-sex partner; or scrutinised as to what they do in bed by perfect strangers.

I recall a letter to a local paper written by a man who was obviously heartily sick of us whingeing queers demanding rights. "I'm … puzzled why some 'gay' people want the rest of us to accept them as ordinary members of our society, but demand to be treated as a special group when they feel it's advantageous to a cause which defines their whole being in terms of sexuality and nothing else," he wrote. I take his point. Were we to never mention having sex at all we would have a much easier ride.

But on the other hand, I know that we lesbians and gay men live a lifestyle and participate in activities that most people believe are immoral and unacceptable, such as spending time in Ikea on a weekend, holding fundraisers for Battersea Dogs and Cats Home and dancing to Gloria Gaynor, but we are less likely to cause serious problems in the world than our heterosexual counterparts.

I absolutely agree that fighting for the rights for same-sex marriage is going too far. I would outlaw marriage for everyone, including heterosexuals, and grant access to a civil partnership union across the board. That should put a stop to folk whingeing about the granting of special privileges.